MARKET-ALERT – Rumblings Up, Down, and Around Wall Street – Issue #427 dated April 2, 2017 – with Ray Dirks of RAYDIRKS Research and his team of Securities Analysts and Money Managers, along with the internationally followed Web Sites www.CorporateProfile.com and www.CPreports.com, where Fashion meets Finance, and where Stocks meet Blonds.

Well, well, well…It was another exciting week that ended Friday, March 30, the final trading day of the first quarter. Trading was modest, as most stock market participants were focused on the events in Washington, where President Trump failed on his first significant effort – doing away with Obamacare and trying to gain legislative support for a new health care plan called Trumpcare.

Rumblings’ readers/investors who follow our Favorite Stocks for 2017 should be feeling good as our largest stock on the list – Apple, Inc. (APPL) hit another new all-time high at $144.50 high, and closed the week up $3.02 points at $143.68 per share.

Now, let’s quote from “The Trader” column in tomorrow’s Barron’s, the Dow Jones Business and Financial Weekly, where the headline reads : “Dow Up 4.6% in Sixth Straight Winning Quarter”. The article leads off : It was the quarter the Trump trade died…and the market didn’t seem to mind.

Yes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 4.6% to 20,663 during the first three months of 2017, its sixth straight quarter of gains, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 index gained 5.5% to 2,363, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 9.8% to 5,912, its best quarter since 2013.

But the market produced those gains without much help from the sectors that surged following the November presidential election – the ones that were supposed to benefit the most from the policies proposed by President Donald J. Trump. The S&P 500 Industrials index, which was supposed to benefit from increased infrastructure spending, rose 4%; financials, which would benefit from scaled-back regulation, advanced just 2.1; and energy tumbled 7.3%. Instead it was the anti-Trump stocks that led the way higher, with technology gaining a whopping 12%. “Tech was left for dead after the election,” says Rhino Trading Partners’ Michael Block. In 2017, it has been the market’s best performer.

The rotation out of what had worked and into what hadn’t has removed a lot of the excesses from the market. The S&P 500 dipped 0.04% during March, and Block notes that as of Thursday night, 50 of the 997 stocks in the Russell 1,000 index (yes, 997) were overbought based on the 14-day Relative Strength Index, which measures the speed of price movements, while just 11 were oversold. “That leaves the overwhelming majority in the middle,” Block says. “We are hanging around in a range here.”

And it isn’t just stocks that have been doused with a bucket of cold water. The latest American Association of Individual Investors survey shows the percentage of bullish respondents fell to 30.2%, 16 points lower than the start of the year, while bearish sentiment rose to 37.4%,12.2 points higher. “The market got ahead of itself and was due for a pause,” says SunTrust strategist Keith Lerner. “The good news is that a lot of the sentiment measures have cooled off.”

And why shouldn’t they? Just over a week ago, Trump’s health-care plan died in Congress, and investors were worried it meant the remainder of the administration’s pro-growth agenda could hit roadblocks on the way to becoming law – or not. These concerns caused the S&P 500 to drop 1.2% on March 21, only the second move of 1 percent or more in either direction this quarter, the fewest such moves since 1995. That alone was enough to worry investors in the AAII survey: 43 percent said the lack of downward volatility made them more bearish.

You wouldn’t know it from looking at the market last week, however, as stocks bounced back from the previous week’s losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.4% last week, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.8%, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.4%. Natixis Global Asset Management strategist David Lafferty attributes the rebound to Trump’s ability to pivot away from the health-care disappointment to talk about tax cuts. “The market changes its narrative when Trump changes his mind,” he says..

But maybe the rally has less to do with Trump and more to do with the fact that global economic data has been consistently strong. Last week, the final reading of of fourth-quarter gross domestic product showed growth of 2.1%, above forecasts for 2%. The Conference Board’s measure of consumer confidence surged to its highest level since 2000, and that was just in the U.S. .SunTrust’s Lerner notes that 84% of countries have been showing expanding manufacturing activity, the best level since 2014. “A solid synchronized global recovery has been in place that goes beyond the winner of the U.S. election,” he says.

The Trump trade is dead. Long live the Trump trade.

Rumblings likes this column in Barron’s for much of the information it provides to the reader. However, the people quoted don’t directly state why the stock market has been acting so well over the last several months – namely, bonds are way over-priced not only in the United States, but abroad. Stock investors are not concerned that interest rates will go up by 100 basis points or so over the next 6 to 12 months. Interest rates are extremely low, and from this level, bond prices will drop severely.

Rumblings suggests that readers/investors should sell most of their fixed-income holdings and purchase common stocks. As we said earlier in this issue and other recent Rumblings’ issues, the best buy is Apple, Inc. around $143 – $144 level. In addition to its very strong growth on huge revenues, Apple maintains an enormous cash position, and it will continue to buy back its own stock. Also, our friend Warren Buffett, perhaps the best most highly regarded investor in the United States, has continued to buy Apple.

Rumblings suggests that readers/investors do their due diligence, check with their investment advisers, and purchase shares in Apple , Inc. and some or all of the stocks on its Favorite Stocks for 2017 list.

Rumblings also suggests that readers/investors place no more than 1% of the funds that they devote to common stocks in the securities of any one company. It pays to diversify…!

Corporate Profile Disclosure:

The information contained in this article could contain forward-looking statements relating to the developments of the featured company’s products, services and future operating results or the future of the market. Statements contained in writing or in interviews are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The words “believe,”, “expect,” “intend,” “anticipate,” variations of such words, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could affect performance include, but are not limited to, those factors that are discussed in each Company’s most recent reports and/or registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Visitors to this Internet Site are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. These statements have not been independently verified by the officers, directors or employees of Corporate Profile, LLC .com.

The information on this Internet Site has been submitted by journalists and analysts or provided by the companies contained herein or other sources believed to be reliable. Corporate Profile, LLC has not independently verified the information provided to it by third parties. Each individual should perform his or her own independent analysis before investing. The information contained herein is neither an offer nor a solicitation to buy any of the securities of the companies contained herein. Investing in securities is speculative and contains a high element of risk